RGA - NYSE
Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated
RGA·NYSE
$195.11
-1.6%Financial ServicesInsurance - Reinsurance
Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated engages in reinsurance business. It offers individual and group life and health insurance products, such as term life, credit life, universal life, whole life, group life and health, joint and last survivor insurance, critical illness, disability, and longevity products; asset-intensive and financial reinsurance products; and other capital motivated solutions. The company also provides reinsurance for mortality, morbidity, lapse, and investment-related risk associated with products; and reinsurance for investment-related risks. In addition, it develops and markets technology solutions; and provides consulting and outsourcing solutions for the insurance and reinsurance industries. The company serves life insurance companies in the United States, Latin America, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, and the Asia Pacific. Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Chesterfield, Missouri.
At a Glance
Live SnapshotMarket Cap$12.78B
EPS17.9400
P/E Ratio10.88
Earnings Date07/30/2026
Earnings Call Transcript
RGA • 2026 • Q1
Operator
Good day. Welcome to the Reinsurance Group of America first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jeff Hopson, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Jeff Hopson
Thank you. Welcome to RGA's first quarter 2026 conference call. I'm joined on the call this morning with Tony Cheng, RGA's President and Chief Executive Officer; Axel André, Chief Financial Officer; Jonathan Porter, Chief Risk Officer; and Jayson Bronchetti, Chief Investment Officer. A quick reminder before we get started regarding forward-looking information and non-GAAP financial measures. Some of our comments or answers may contain forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from expected results. Please refer to the earnings release we issued yesterday for a list of important factors that could cause actual results to differ from expected results. During the course of the call, the information we provide may include non-GAAP financial measures. Please see our earnings release, earnings presentation, and quarterly financial supplement, all of which are posted on our website for discussion of these terms and reconciliations to GAAP measures.
Jeff Hopson
Throughout the call, we will be referencing slides from the earnings presentation, which again is posted on our website. Now I'll turn the call over to Tony for his comments.
Tony Cheng
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's call. We appreciate your continued interest in RGA. As you've seen from our first quarter results, we delivered a strong start to the year with excellent performance across many regions and businesses. The quarter reflects disciplined execution, strong underlying fundamentals, and the benefits of the diversified global platform we have built over time. Building on our strong 2025 performance, we believe our results this quarter further demonstrates that we are successfully executing on our strategy. Our focus remains on well-balanced earnings growth, capital allocation, and delivering attractive returns over the long term. Looking at the financial results, the strength in the quarter was broad-based across our regions and products. I'll highlight a few specifics in the quarter. Asia Pacific had another strong quarter, driven by ongoing growth and strong execution.
Tony Cheng
We closed a number of notable transactions in the region, particularly in Japan, spanning both in-force and flow deals that includes both asset and biometric risk. EMEA's earnings continue to reflect good new business, with results exceeding expectations. Performance was supported by favorable overall experience and continued momentum in longevity across the region. We closed additional longevity transactions during the quarter by leveraging deep, long-standing client relationships. We remain optimistic given our leadership position and differentiated competitive strength. In the U.S., adjusted operating performance was strong, supported by favorable claims experience and the contribution from recent new business. Activity in U.S. individual life remains robust, demonstrating sustained momentum in large part driven by our strategic underwriting initiative. I'm pleased with our U.S. Group results, which are in line with our 2026 expectations.
Tony Cheng
Moving to claims experience in the quarter, our economic claims experience was favorable across all regions. While one quarter of claims experience should not be overly emphasized, when considered as part of the cumulative experience since 2023, the favorable experience demonstrates the strength of our pricing, underwriting, and risk selection. Additionally, we continue to see profit emergence from business written and capital deployed over recent years. This profit emergence is tracking in line with expectations as asset portfolios are repositioned prudently over time and claims continues to be in line with expectations. This quarter was another demonstration of the strategic optionality in our global platform. Most of the deployment into in-force transactions was in Asia, where we saw the most attractive opportunities from a risk-reward perspective, primarily driven by our range of innovative solutions.
Tony Cheng
We continue to have very good momentum with our flow business in the U.S., where our value-added underwriting solution and outsourcing efforts sets us apart from competitors. Important to our flexibility is that we are comfortable not proceeding with transactions that do not meet our risk return trade-offs. That discipline continues to be a key feature of both our strategy and our culture. I want to take a brief step back from the details of the quarter and reinforce how we think about RGA's positioning and strategy. At its core, our approach is straightforward. We focus on life and health risk. We operate globally, and we deploy capital selectively where we believe we have competitive advantages and can earn attractive risk-adjusted return.
Tony Cheng
Specifically, RGA has several unique strengths, including strong biometric expertise, asset management capabilities, a global platform, market leading brand, and flexibility to partner across the industry. What is critical is that these strengths do not operate in isolation. They reinforce one another, creating a competitive advantage that is difficult to replicate. When we combine this competitive advantage with a proactive business approach, we create win-win transactions, generating higher returns for RGA and greater value for our clients. Let me share a few examples from this quarter. In North America, we extended a long-standing U.S. client relationship into Canada, where the client was seeking a reinsurer to partner on evolving product offerings. Our global platform enabled an exclusive relationship. While our biometric expertise and collaborative partnership model differentiated us and drove a successful outcome.
Tony Cheng
In Asia, we closed multiple co-insurance transactions by leveraging our ability to reinsure both sides of the balance sheet, combining asset management and biometric expertise. These wins across both flow and in-force transactions reflect the strength of our local presence and our position as a trusted counterparty. Lastly, in EMEA, we completed an exclusive transaction with an insurance company that leveraged our biometric expertise to unlock value from its in-force portfolio. The structure generates incremental capital to support the partner's growth, and we expect to replicate this model in EMEA and other parts of the world going forward. On the capital front, we again repurchased shares allocating $50 million this quarter. A balanced use of excess capital is an important part of our strategy to generate long-term shareholder value. Looking ahead, our confidence in the outlook for 2026 and beyond remains high.
Operator
The first question comes from Suneet Kamath with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Suneet Kamath
Okay. Then I guess on the Equitable transaction, now that Equitable and Corebridge are planning to merge, does that impact your flow reinsurance agreement that you have with Equitable? Are there any other sort of concentration issues that we should think about as those two companies come together? Thanks.
Jonathan Porter
Hey, Suneet, thank you for the question. Look, we don't wanna comment too much on any one client. Obviously, we have a strong partnership with Equitable and expect this to continue. Look, we remain very pleased with the transaction executed last year. Do not expect any impacts as a result of this news, either on the in-force or the flow transaction. Just to bring it up a level. Look, for the U.S. overall, we remain very optimistic as we continue to benefit from our strategic positioning around our biometric and underwriting strengths.
Operator
The next question comes from Michael Ward with UBS. Please go ahead.
Mike Ward
Hi. Thank you. Good morning. Just wondering if you guys could dig into the mortality favorability in the U.S. at least. It's, you know, persistently been, I think, just surprisingly favorable. I feel like you guys must have among some of the best data across the space, right, in terms of the underlying trends. I was just wondering if we could, you know, dig into that a little bit.
Jonathan Porter
Yeah. Hi, Mike. This is Jonathan. I'm happy to address that. You know, speaking of our own experience, our Q1 claims experience was favorable, and that was due to a lower frequency of claims, both large claims and non-large claims. Uncapped cohorts were favorable, capped cohorts were in line. I would say there are no other significant trends to call out in our own data or experience that we saw in the quarter. When I bring it up to a population level, the flu season was more moderate this year than last year based on CDC data and peaked at the end of December. I would say population excess mortality, when you look over 2024, 2025, continues to be modest. We're seeing reasonable trends there.
Mike Ward
I guess what I really mean is, like, if we think about over kind of a longer-term period, I think, Axel, you mentioned a $300 million economic benefit that, you know, that you haven't recognized yet. Just, you know, I know there's probably an element of COVID pull forward, you know, there's the GLP-1 phenomenon. That was more of kind of what I meant.
Jonathan Porter
Okay. Yeah. I mean, certainly we're, you know, we're pleased to see that there are some favorable tailwinds, you know, in the future on the horizon. You mentioned GLP-1 specifically. Just to reiterate, you know, we haven't made any material changes to our assumptions due to GLP-1s, but the benefit we expect to see does give us more confidence that our existing mortality improvement assumptions will be realized in the future. You know, we continue to see signs of positive momentum as well related to GLP-1s in 2026, with the recent approval of oral GLP-1s, reducing prices and broadening access, including Medicare and Medicaid coverage in the U.S. You know, that's a trend we continue to follow. You know, if and when appropriate, we would reflect that in our assumptions.
Operator
The next question comes from Wesley Carmichael with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Wes Carmichael
Hey, good morning. My first question was just on earnings seasonality. In the past, especially before LDTI, I think we thought about the first quarter as being weaker from an earnings perspective, particularly from mortality in the U.S. When you step back now in a post-LDTI world, how should we think about it, you know, thinking about all the geographies, but the seasonality in terms of the first quarter versus the rest of the year?
Jonathan Porter
Yeah. Wes, this is Jonathan. Thanks for the question. We do expect some higher claims in the winter months, as you point out, both from the flu and from other causes. Our assumptions reflect the seasonality, which is incorporated into our reserves. An average flu season is essentially built in as higher Q1 claims expectation. Under LDTI, we would expect any differences to that higher expectation to be partially offset from an earnings perspective, although this is dependent on how the experience emerges by type of cohort. This seasonality assumption is something we routinely review as part of our annual assumption process.
Wes Carmichael
Okay. Jonathan, any help with, I mean, how we can think or maybe just like in a percentage basis of how much lower the first quarter would be than the rest of the year?
Jonathan Porter
Yeah. I mean, I think because we take the seasonality into account, I think that levelizes what you would expect from an earnings perspective to a large extent, other than potentially some seasonality that comes through on uncapped cohorts. I think under LDTI, there should be less earnings impact from that than you would have seen in the past.
Operator
The next question comes from Wilma Burdis with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Wilma Burdis
Okay. Thank you. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what you're seeing on new enforced block transactions. You know, there's been a lot of strong interest in the market in general, but maybe some ebbs and flows there. Can you just talk about what you're seeing there on spread expectations and also the level of interest in more complex deal structures? Thanks.
Tony Cheng
Yeah, sure. There's a lot there. Let me firstly start off just our pipeline. I'll give some color to that. Look, we see the pipeline remain strong, high quality and very importantly, diversified across the globe. I'll take you through just the three regions. Firstly, Asia continues to be strong, both in our product development area as well as serving the middle class, as well as the Financial Solutions as clients adjust to new capital frameworks in markets such as Japan and Korea. In the U.K. longevity, we continue to be a market leader, we're seeing continued strong business momentum there, driven by our immensely strong team.
Tony Cheng
In the U.S., we continue to benefit from strategically repositioning around our biometric and underwriting strengths, as well as the industry realignment that's taking place there. I just want to reiterate and remind everyone that, you know, look, our focus is very much on our sweet spot, which combines both the biometric and asset capabilities. You know, we are very disciplined and will not hesitate to walk away from any transactions that do not meet our risk-return trade-off.
Operator
The next question comes from Thomas Gallagher with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.
Tom Gallagher
Guys, do you have any sense of cession rates though for the industry more broadly? I'm just curious, has that been stable? Is that changing at all?
Tony Cheng
Yeah, look, we don't have that at our fingertips at the moment. I mean, we focus, you know, once again on delivering just those comprehensive solutions where, it could be in product development nature, it could be underwriting, solutions in nature. I really focus on adding that value to the client and in partnership. The cession rates itself, I mean, obviously we note over time, but, you know, we feel we can control our own destiny by really focusing on our clients' problems and looking for win-win solutions.
Operator
The next question comes from Joel Hurwitz with Dowling & Partners. Please go ahead.
Operator
The next question comes from Pablo Singzon with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Pablo Singzon
Hi, thank you. My questions are not about the quarter specifically, so thanks in advance for indulging me. First, there's this widely held industry view that as the P&C cycle softens, the large multi-line European reinsurers tend to be more competitive on the life side. Do you agree with that view? If so, how do you think competition from that part of the market unfolds given price softening in P&C?
Tony Cheng
Sure. Pablo, let me take that. You know, look, what you share is a view I've heard both sides of that equation as to when the P&C cycle softens or hardens. Let me try and address competition in general as to how we see it. You know, look, in our spot, you know, where in our sweet spot, where we focus on transactions with both biometric and asset risks, it continues to be very stable. You know, we focus on this sweet spot by leveraging off our key strengths, our strong local presence and relationships. In some ways, we feel RGA is unique, one of one player in that space.
Tony Cheng
In addition, is that with our global platform, we have this strategic optionality to pursue the best risk-adjusted opportunities that arise around the world. You know, with that all in mind, we remain very excited about our business momentum and disciplined positioning in the reinsurance market.
Pablo Singzon
Thanks, Tony. And then my second question also has to do with competition, but from a different angle. You know, an increasing number of U.S. primary insurers are setting up internal reinsurance captives to generate capital efficiencies, and some have even started writing a third-party business. And some of them have set up sidecars that are not that different from Ruby Re. I guess what's your view on this trend? Does it reflect just enormous market opportunity, or is it an ambiguous sign of just more competition entering the space? Thanks.
Tony Cheng
Let me try and address that. You know, we definitely have been seeing that increased competition in various markets around the world. That competition, once again, is really more for the vanilla, asset-intensive type transactions. That's what these vehicles are really being set up for. You know, once again, I just reiterate, our sweet spot is transactions that have both asset and biometric risk. We feel we're really uniquely positioned one of one to do that. You know, whether it's in Japan, where this market is large, or in the U.S., we are very optimistic about our ongoing momentum in these markets. You know, Q1 was a really strong proof point of our success in executing on our strategy in this area.
Operator
The next question comes from Alex Scott with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Alex Scott
Got it. That's helpful. Second question I have is, I think in the U.K., there's some proposed regulation around captive reinsurance and, you know, limiting some of the uses of that. I mean, is there anything around that that could be an opportunity, or I guess, you know, a risk at all to your structures? Just interested in how that might impact you.
Jonathan Porter
Hi, Alex. This is Jonathan. I think you're referring to the recent information that's come up from the PRA related to counterparty charges. It's very new, but at this point we don't expect it to have a big impact on our business. It's related to funded reinsurance, and the majority of our longevity business that we do in the U.K. is on a swap basis where we take just the longevity risk and not the asset risk. Just to size our block for you, about 90% of our in-force block for our longevity business is done on a swap basis.
Jonathan Porter
Initial industry takeaways are that there might be a compression of overall economics for seeding companies due to the higher charge, but there will also be an increased linkage to reinsure credit quality and collateral strength, and that should favor strong counterparties like RGA.
Operator
There's a follow-up question from Wesley Carmichael with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. You may be muted.
Operator
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Tony Cheng for any closing remarks.
Tony Cheng
Yeah. Look, thank you for your continued interest in RGA. We are pleased with the strong start for the year, and we look forward to continue to deliver in the future. This concludes our Q1 conference call. Thank you.
Transcript from May 8, 2026
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